it’s worth sometimes, there are some good games. and you also supporting the devs.
I think the only really fair points here are the always online, drm, season passes, and microtransactions. The rest of that is poor implementation. DLC is great when it’s a real expansion that wasn’t ready for the full launch. Multiple platforms are fine except when both need to be running like EA and Ubisoft do, but they have been doing that for over a decade.
Spyware is more of an issue for piracy than more legitimate sources.
What do SJWs and censorship have to do with the existence of any of the rest of this? Social pressures will always make bigoted stuff harder to find.
Just last week Disney updated all digital copies of The French Connection to remove some racial language. There’s an argument there that downloading or at least owning a local copy of classics is required if your don’t want the “edited for current sensitivity” version.
I get this argument when it’s aimed at steaming services that have fractured out to tons of individual companies catalogues when it used to just be Netflix and Amazon, since you have to pay for all them monthly. I don’t get the outrage over having to install an extra free launcher on your PC. If you want all your games to come though one central channel, then buy a console.
It’s not just about the launcher, it’s about the fact that you no longer “own” the software you buy. In the previous era, you bought a disc from GameStop\Walmart\EB Games\etc and you owned the software. As long as that game disk worked, you could install it and play it forever if you wanted. The only DRM was there in an attempt to prevent you from copying the disc and giving it to someone else.
Now, you have game launchers with DRM that requires you to have an active internet connection to play the game- even if it’s a fucking single player title with no multiplayer component whatsoever.
What’s worse, you have clauses hidden in the EULA’s that allows the publishers to disable access to the game if they decide to. Worse still, they can just decide in the future that it’s no longer profitable for them to host the game on their platform, and then you can no longer download it to play it if a bout of nostalgia kicks in.
It’s absolutely ridiculous that you can buy something, and then be told at a later time that even though you purchased the game, you are no longer allowed to play it even though you’ve done nothing wrong(like cheating in a MP game resulting in a ban I can get).
So it’s not just about the “free” launchers, it’s about what they ultimately represent…a loss of individual ownership of the products you purchase.